In vitro culturing of cells provides material necessary for research in pharmacology, physiology, and toxicology. Recent advances in pharmaceutical screening techniques allow pharmaceutical companies to rapidly screen vast libraries of compounds against therapeutic targets. These large-scale screening techniques require large numbers of cells grown and maintained in vitro. Maintaining these large numbers of cells requires large volumes of cell growth media and reagents and large numbers and types of laboratory cell culture containers and laboratory equipment. This activity is also labor intensive.
Cells are grown in specialized cell culture containers including roller bottles, cell culture dishes and plates, multiwell plates, microtiter plates, common flasks and multi-layered cell growth flasks and vessels. An exemplary flask for creating a suitable environment for culturing cells is a common laboratory flask. Cells in culture attach to and grow on the bottom surface(s) of the flask, immersed in a suitable sustaining media.
With the advent of cell-based high throughput applications, cell culture vessels have been developed to provide an increased surface area for cell growth while also providing necessary gas exchange. These systems also employ traditional cell culture vessels including common flasks, roller bottles, cell culture dishes, as well as multi-layered cell growth vessels including multi-layer flasks, multi-layer cell culture dishes, bioreactors, and the like, which may include specialized surfaces designed to enhance the cell culture parameters including growth density and differentiation factors.
In addition, cell-based high throughput applications have become automated. Automation permits manipulation of the cell culture vessel much like that performed by the manual operator. Further, flask vessels having multiple layers of cell growth are capable of producing a greater cell yield than commonly known flasks that permit growth of cells on a single bottom wall. While these multiple layer vessels allow for the growth of large numbers of cells, they present special challenges in day to day use.
In some high density cell culture vessels, each cell culture layer inside the flask or vessel has multiple ports to direct the flow of cells and cell culture media into the vessel. These systems for directing the flow of cells and cell culture media into and out of these high density vessels provide locations for cell culture media and air to mix, creating bubbles or foam.
Introducing cell culture media into these vessels in excess of that necessary for cell growth has been one way to reduce the formation of foam inside these vessels. However, cell growth media can be quite expensive, and the use of excess cell growth media is not desirable.
There is a need for a cell culture vessel that can provide a device to direct media into a cell culture vessel in a way that reduces the formation of bubbles or foam inside the container. There is also a need for a high density cell culture vessel that may incorporate such a device. There is a need for high density cell culture vessels that reduce the formation of bubbles and reduce the amount of cell culture media needed for the cell culture vessel to operate properly. In addition, there is a need for such a device that may be suitable for use in the performance of high throughput assay applications that commonly employ robotic manipulation.